


Chirality

by amb-roses (overtture)



Series: a list of the things that will be mine [2]
Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Episode: AEW Dynamite 27 August 2020, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Metaphors, Moving On, Open to Interpretation, Post-Betrayal, Relationship Study, Self-Acceptance, Self-Worth Issues, Unreliable Setting, ask to tag, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26370631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtture/pseuds/amb-roses
Summary: "What were you hoping to achieve? Do you even know?" Kenny asks. "What did you want, Adam?"He hadn't realized his eyes drifted until the name makes them dart over to meet his. "Escape," he says."Huh?"Adam's eyes feel heavy, but he only indulges himself with a laborious blink."I wanted to escape."(Post-AEW Dynamite August 27th, 2020; in which Adam Page learns how to live with himself, his humanity, and his definition of heaven versus reality.)
Relationships: Kenny Omega & Adam Page, Kenny Omega/Adam Page
Series: a list of the things that will be mine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916365
Kudos: 16





	Chirality

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally a dream sequence i wrote for another fic but I think it works well enough on its own and i didn't want to banish it to my 23k writing graveyard to never escape again lmao
> 
> anyway this probably doesn't read as well as i'd like but i think that adds to the absolute brainrot flavor of my hangman works <3 as usual, ill prolly come back and edit this a little later, enjoy!!

Adam enters.

The room is silent. Empty.

Adam sits down. He thinks. He thinks— about heaven.

His family had never been that religious, Adam had never really believed in any kind of God, but he's thought about heaven, and what that would mean.

_What is heaven?_ Adam asks himself. _It's me,_ he answers. _It's me and you._ Even if he didn't know who _you_ was yet.

It was humanity. It was being human, being so human it didn't have to hurt anymore.

Sometimes, Adam feels so human it feels like he's only made of hurt. He can't stand being human the way he is now and always has been. It's limiting. It's restricting. It's claustrophobic. Borders and barriers put up by physics, laws by men and women of science who search for reasoning so desperately that they bind the rest of humanity down with words and meanings.

Adam can't stand being human sometimes. Nobody else seems to understand, and when it explodes out of him, expressed in miscommunication and expensive mistakes wrapped in emotions he can’t explain and the way space and time cut around him as he pulls off a standing shooting star press, he wraps his arms around himself. He tries to rein himself back into something with human words and simpler concepts, half-baked excuses formed of missing words and meanings he can’t place.

He knows Kenny is like that too, sometimes. Bigger than his skin, larger than his arm span in the way he looks longingly down his outstretched grasp, as though endlessly surprised when he realizes- oh. There his fingers are, right at the end of his hands, at the ends of his arms, so close, not quite as far as he’d thought.

Kenny enters.

Adam pulls his legs up onto the edge of the chair cushion, ankles to the back of his thighs, hands linked around them to hold himself together.

Kenny crosses the room.

Adam inhales.

Kenny crosses the room slower. Glides as gracefully as he does in the ring. He sits at the end of the bed.

Adam, within arms reach, wipes his face into the knees of his jeans.

Between them sits a pair of sunglasses, hanging by one of its arms from his shirt's pocket.

"What were you hoping to achieve?" He asks.

Adam curls a little further into himself but doesn't look away. He’s not entirely sure how he’s going to find a way to explain this in any way other than sounding like he’d thrown a temper tantrum over how infinite and complex wrestling makes him feel and how _not-that_ the rest of them make him. 

Fortunately, Kenny doesn't look angry. He doesn't look upset, either. He doesn't look... Anything at all.

Actually no, he looks almost curious. It's his eyes. They look present and in the moment, unlike the rest of his expression. Attentive. Aware.

"Well?" He asks, not unkindly. "Do you even know?"

Adam leans back in his seat, just a little. He drags his nails lightly over his pants as he loosens his posture, moving his arms to balance on his knees, framing Kenny's collarbones in his perspective.

"I think I just wanted to..."

The words drip from him like an old tap. Cast out into the sea between them— no, the ripple of the water is shortly broken up by Kenny's torso. They’ve changed locations. The dirty blonde's sitting in the bathtub, across from him. A few inches between them. Too small and too big, around them, between them.

Kenny's slowly water-darkening shirt breaks Adam's ripples. He doesn't move and nothing returns his way. Signals, sending signals out into the nothingness, ripples, and calls with no responses, questions with no answers, pleading with nothing at all to show for it.

"What did you want, Adam?"

He hadn't realized his eyes drifted until the name makes them dart over to meet his. He reels in his words, pulls vowels and consonants, and places them together with gentle nudging and heavy-handed guidance.

"Escape," he says.

"Huhn?"

Adam's eyes feel heavy, but he only indulges himself in a laborious blink.

"I wanted to escape."

Kenny digests this, his eyes listing now to somewhere low on Adam's right cheek.

"And have you?"

Adam considers it, leaning his head back. His hair tie breaks with the motion, throwing his hair out into the water.

"In a way, I think so. Maybe like," he tries, once, twice, "like, maybe like a step one."

The stars are bright above them when he blinks. In his peripheral, he sees Kenny tilt his head back too.

"It's beautiful."

"Yeah," he says. "It is. It's been a really long time since I've seen..."

The stars? Himself, without so much balanced on his shoulders, weights tethered beneath his skin, bound to his very bones?

He lets those words drip too. He's just trying to adjust, fill the spaces left behind with words never needing to be said. Still, it doesn't seem Kenny minds all that much. Adam had always been a bit slow to catch up to him. It was familiar more than anything, in a good sort of way. Familiar and nostalgic without the tinge of bittersweet.

Adam reaches his hand towards the stars that stare back, watches starlight and moonlight cut cleanly around his fingers, light, light he can grab but never hold.

A hand reaches back for him.

"And what do you want now?"

Adam sheds his jeans and flannel as he stands on shaking legs, shirts brushing his knees and tank-top flapping in the breeze. The night is cold, but there is heat in the sky.

Voices without mouths, words without meaning, speaking words that have no use being voiced between them. They were on similar wavelengths. Adam frowns at the length of his legs the same way Kenny stares at his arms. 

"I want..."

He isn't tall enough to reach. Adam clenches his fists and when he opens them, a ladder tucks itself into the space between his forearm and hip, wide in his hand. He sets it up with quiet, methodical movements on the soft dirt and begins to climb up.

"I think..."

At the top, he looks back up from his focus. A hand reaches down for him. He goes the last few steps to the actual top and reaches, shoulder straining.

A face appears from the dark, freckled with constellations and broken glass. They mirror him, reaching down towards him, arm lined with strain. Something warm and wet drips, drips, drips onto, into his face from them.

Their hands brush. Then touch. Their hands line up, a little uneven. Too long and too short. Too thick and too thin. Too much and too little, here and there. Different, and yet, familiar. A hand so familiar it breaks him out of his daze.

_I can't stand this,_ Adam thinks. He gently tilts his own, until he's able to press forward, lacing his fingers between their own and curling them inwards. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but—

His hand goes through them as he reaches, reaches through their arm and up, up until the very tips of his fingers brushes a cheek. Stubble. Warm eyes. A smile.

He readjusts his balance, reaches just a little farther, and ends up crashing backward.

He leaves himself— no, wait, just his clothes, as he falls, and blood, sweat beads up over his skin as the stars blur, smear, twist and twist like galaxy spirals into large singular suns, parallel above him.

His head is in someone's lap.

Kenny's fingers cradle the back of his neck, his head. Halo'd and shadowed. He looks so much older and yet, just as he always has.

Ring-ropes frame his visage, textured canvas rough beneath his bare back. Bright lights line the ceiling in stripes that shine painfully bright down on them. Shiny black wrestling tights, aged into a gentler matte frame either side of him, Kenny's old gear. Kneepads bite at the sides of Adam's joints in a way so painfully nostalgic, he can feel the ache and longing for the past sigh like a fond, old friend in his heart.

"I think it's like..."

_Looking without seeing,_ Adam thinks. Doesn't say.

Its all anyone's ever done to him and it had made him bitter and cruel, even in his self-pity.

_Looking without seeing,_ Adam thinks. He's loathed so many people for doing it to him when it's all he'd ever done to others. It's the only way people are able to perceive each other.

_Look at him,_ Adam had thought about Kenny from afar, gold and silver forged for Kings and Queens adorning his skin, titles and words, the weight he couldn't quite understand yet. _Look at him!_

_Look at me,_ Adam had thought as they turned away, one by one, leaving each other behind, leaving their titles behind, leaving their history behind, leaving it all. How could they just do that ~~to him~~? How could they just leave ~~him~~? Leaving the decorations he'd spent so long mounting just to get the crowd to glance his way, away from the Bucks. Away from Cody. Away from K—

_**LOOK AT ME!** _

_Please_ , he thinks. _Look at me._

_Please,_ he thinks. _See me. I'm right here. I can be great. I can be important. I can help. I can be useful. Just don't look away. Please._

_Please,_ he thinks. _I don't want to disappear. I don't want to be alone. There isn't anything else left. There isn't anything else left of me that's worth it. There won't be anything else left of me without—_

"Please," he says.

Kenny gently tilts his hand until he's able to press his fingers through the wet curtains of his hair, lacing his fingers between the strands and curl them inwards, nails dragging comfortingly over the nape of his neck.

"Can you see me?" Kenny asks.

He can see the details of his face, the small quirk of his lips a little bit lopsided. The dark curl of everything about him, eyelashes, hair, something in the depths of his eyes, in the twist of his wrinkles and crinkles.

Adam reaches up and brushes a hand over his cheek. He's surprised— he's warm. He doesn't know why he would be. A phrase comes to mind, static and faint, something about windows and souls. He rubs a thumb over his cheekbone as-though it would smear the condensation on the glass, let him peer into who was crammed into such a small space, uneven skin, creases, and crinkles.

He still can't see in, no matter how hard he squints, yet— wait.

"Not as well as I'd like," Adam replies. Kenny's small not-smile tilts into something rueful.

"Can you see me?" Adam asks.

All of his built up, reserve courage blows abruptly out of him with the question. It's a heavy one, a weighted one, precise and precious, aged like wine in the deep cellar of questions he'd never ask, ones for rainy days and long nights that stretch far longer than nights really ought to stretch.

Still, Kenny searches. He studies and catalogs, eyes wide as though he is capturing every moment frame by frame to hang somewhere. A personal heaven in his mind, maybe, like Adam holds for him and every moment between them.

A hand leaves his hair and finds his face, an asymmetrical hand cupping an imperfect face.

"Not as well as I'd like," Kenny answers.

Adam smiles a not-smile and thinks maybe that can be close enough to heaven.


End file.
